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From: Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: evolution of bytes, The joy of FORTRAN
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2025 02:07:13 -0000 (UTC)
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On Mon, 3 Mar 2025 01:50:33 -0000 (UTC), Waldek Hebisch wrote:

> In alt.folklore.computers Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 2 Mar 2025 14:58:22 -0000 (UTC), Waldek Hebisch wrote:
>> 
>>> IBM deemed decimal arithmetic to be necessary for comercial market.
>> 
>> Interesting to see a recognition nowadays that even scientific
>> users might be interested in decimal arithmetic, too. Look at how
>> the latest version of the IEEE 754 spec includes decimal data types
>> in addition to the traditional binary ones.
> 
> Pushing decimal numbers into modern hardware is practical idiocracy.

Remember the original point of IEEE 754: it was about minimizing surprises 
for newcomers to finite-precision arithmetic. Does that count as 
“idiocracy” as well?

But we still have the issue that arithmetic in binary has different 
rounding errors from the decimal arithmetic we all learn in school. So 
IEEE 754 now offers the option for running the entire calculation in 
decimal, from inputs to outputs and everything in-between.